Potential Students

If you are not an admitted CMU student, please do not send me mail inquiring about whether you might work with me as a Ph.D. student.

I'm not saying this because I'm a jerk. Here's why:

In any given year, I expect to take on one or two new Ph.D. students.
I will keep this page up to date if I'm not.

At Carnegie
Mellon, the admissions process is handled entirely by an admissions
committee, whose membership changes each year. Individual professors do
not make admissions decisions, and I'm not a member of the admissions
committee. As a result, I don't have influence over whether a particular
student is admitted or not. Once a student is admitted, s/he has
substantial flexibility in choosing an advisor to work with. All admitted
Ph.D. students receive graduate fellowships from the department.

I encourage you to visit the CMU CSD admissions website if you have further questions about the application process.

Facutly receive an enormous number of these emails - you'll note
that many faculty have little pages like this about how not to contact
them. Our responsibilities are to our existing Ph.D. students, our
teaching, and our universities, and time just doesn't permit a personal,
thoughtful response to every email asking about admissions that we get.